It’s been six months since politics blogger Andrew Sullivan decided to take his popular blog, The Dish, independent, and on Monday he posted a half-year status update: The blog now has 27,349 paid subscribers who have contributed $715,000 in revenue. That takes The Dish 80 percent of the way to its goal of $900,000 in revenue for the first year.

It’s admirable progress, but as Sullivan acknowledges, most of that revenue came within the first few days of the announcement that The Dish was breaking free from the Daily Beast:

As for the number of readers who are hitting the paywall, Sullivan noted that “the number of readers who have used up their five read-ons now stands at 28,000.” 2.5 percent of readers who hit the paywall convert, and Sullivan says that’s better than the industry average of 2 percent.

“From March onward, everyone is on auto-renewal, which gives us much more stability. But we won’t really know how sustainable we are until we see if we can get all our most devoted Dishheads to give the same amount next February when their subs come due,” Sullivan writes. “I’m pretty confident we can – but enough of a worry-wart not to declare success until then. Nonetheless, the good news is that when you look at the revenue after that first money-bomb, it has stabilized since April and shows little sign of declining.”

Here’s a video of Sullivan speaking about subscription strategies and new blogging models at paidContent Live: